


when you read, you begin with

by tunemyart



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F, but with a season six tag (happy times only!), early days! (again)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 22:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20298724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunemyart/pseuds/tunemyart
Summary: Not at the very beginning, but near it, Gabrielle comes to what seems like the obvious conclusion that Xena can’t read. Xena doesn’t immediately disabuse her of the idea.





	when you read, you begin with

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly because the more I thought about the idea that eager and earnest early days!Gabrielle once bought into the illiterate!Xena gag that Lucy pushed for, the more I became convinced that it actually happened. This got a bit away from me (as things tend to do) and feels just a little bit cracky, but I hope y'all enjoy regardless. <3

Not at the very beginning, but near it, Gabrielle watched as a blacksmith flagrantly overcharged Xena for services, and - more incredibly - as Xena paid without a word of argument.

“Xena, you overpaid,” Gabrielle protested since Xena apparently wasn’t going to, and got the attention of the blacksmith. “Excuse me sir - _ sir _ \- well I hardly think that kind of language is necessary! - Oh, it _ that _how you want to - “

Xena grabbed her by the back of her blouse and pulled her away. “Enough. It’s fine. Let’s go.”

“It’s not fine,” Gabrelle protested, “let me go, _ he _knows he took too much money - “

“_ Gabrielle. _”

That tone of voice was still new enough that it succeeded in getting Gabrielle to follow Xena outside without further argument, although all bets were off once they got there. Gabrielle was trying to be better, though, and so she restrained herself to crossing her arms and studying a Xena who was doggedly pretending to ignore her.

“You must have known you overpaid,” Gabrielle guessed. “Did you owe him for something? Something you don’t want to talk about?”

“Gabrielle, will you just drop it?” 

“But his own sign clearly said six dinars to reshoe a horse. A sign! With clearly denoted prices! You didn’t even have to haggle for it!” 

“It’s done,” Xena said shortly and mounted the newly reshod Argo; and that was that.

It was enough for Gabrielle, with her wide eyes and myopic focus, to begin to take in the rest of what her brain started categorizing as ‘_ the signs _’. If anyone handed scrolls to Xena to read, she would push them aside and demand they cut to the chase. In the event she couldn’t get away with blustering through on her considerable charisma, she’d more than once handed something to Gabrielle and asked her to read it for her with the excuse that her hands were busy - which they often were - or that her mind worked best while she kept her body active - Gabrielle couldn’t attest to this one, but the sight of Xena’s physical power exploding out of her while she drilled or practiced her aerodynamic skills hadn’t gotten old yet, and so she’d never complained. 

And, of course, there was her continuing refusal to read anything Gabrielle had written, which Gabrielle had been trying to put down to a general disinterest in storytelling or the arts rather than taking it as a personal attack. 

And so, with a month or so’s worth of observational evidence tallied neatly in her brain, Gabrielle had eventually arrived at the obvious conclusion: 

_ Xena couldn’t read. _

Once she got over the initial surprise of the revelation, Gabrielle realized it wasn’t actually a surprising thing at all. Literate folk were few and far between outside of the bigger cities, which Amphipolis wasn’t. The gods knew she was an anomaly only because she’d basically taught herself to read and write after hounding a local teacher for basic instruction and charmed several traveling bards into gifting her materials to practice with. Reading and writing simply weren’t necessary functions in lives where farming was the basis of everyone’s livelihoods. 

She didn’t know the ins and outs of Xena’s childhood, not yet, but perhaps it was the same. Certainly by the time Xena had claimed her own new world was a warlord, she’d have had people to do the reading and writing for her, who would have quailed at the possibility of being killed if they dared to question whether Xena, the Warrior Princess, the Destroyer of Nations, could _ read. _

Well. That was fine. While Xena wasn’t that person anymore, she still obviously had some hangups about what she must perceive as a deficiency; but Gabrielle was her friend, not a quailing minion. She could be Xena’s support in this. Perhaps even, much further on down the line when Xena had trusted Gabrielle with this secret, she might even be able to teach her to read and write. 

A thousand scenarios burst into her mind at the idea, most of them featuring the safety of their campfire, a new constant she was already coming to depend on, and the trust and gratitude in Xena’s rare full smile. 

“What are you smiling at?” 

Gabrielle startled at Xena’s voice, uncomfortably close, and whirled around to find her looming less than three feet away. She’d taken to getting this sort of amused look on her face when she looked at Gabrielle recently, and Gabrielle alternately took it as fondness and condescension depending on the mood she was in. 

Right now, she went with fondness. A nervous giggle escaped her, and she revised her assessment of Xena’s expression to _ suspicious. _

“Oh, it’s just such a beautiful day!” she squeaked before Xena could start interrogating. “The sun over the mountains, and the wind in the meadows - it’s like a poem, Xena!”

Xena grunted noncommittally. “It’s something,” was all she allowed. “You okay?” 

“Fine! I’ve actually never been better! The air is so sweet, you know, and - “

“It’s like a poem, yeah, I heard,” Xena cut her off. Gabrielle chanced a peek at her again, and found that her expression was once again resting comfortably at _ fond. _“Come on, let’s go see if we can’t get you some better material if you’re gonna insist on it.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


As it turned out, Xena did not reveal to Gabrielle that she couldn’t read, because Gabrielle - in what turned out to be _ a mistake _\- revealed that she already knew first. 

She’d tried to be as gentle as possible, knowing how it must eat at Xena. But Gabrielle had made herself a promise, and she didn’t intend on breaking it. So when Xena was presented with some documents detailing the effects of some local warlord’s raids by the king’s deputies, Gabrielle, who had been hanging back faithfully near Xena’s right, stepped forward to take them. 

Xena and the deputy stared. Blithely, Gabrielle ignored it, and said, “I’ll read these and summarize. It’s just - you two have much more important things to be discussing, strategies to be forming - “

“Alright,” Xena said, and Gabrielle smiled in relief. Xena and the deputy got down to the actual business of things, while Gabrielle shuffled off to a corner of the room and set up shop at an abandoned desk. 

Later, when they had both retired to the luxury of the room that had been provided for them - which seemed odd now to Gabrielle after weeks of sleeping outdoors - Xena quietly asked, “Gabrielle, why did you do that earlier?” 

But Gabrielle had prepared for this. “What? Oh, you mean with the papers? It’s like I said - I can be useful this way, and you have better things to be doing.”

“I’d appreciate the chance to decide for myself what’s important to me,” Xena said, her eyes serious and, if she wasn’t mistaken, a little concern. 

“Oh,” Gabrielle floundered, flustered. Open Xena. She hadn’t prepared for this. Stepping cautiously, she said, “I was really just trying to help. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

“And you really thought that was the most useful you could be?”

Perhaps it was the ease of that curiosity and the openness of her request that led Gabrielle into danger. She shrugged. “I guess I just thought… it would be a way I could help you. I didn’t know you’d be upset. I’m a little surprised you are.” 

Gabrielle figured it was just a control thing, frankly - one didn’t command armies that had conquered the territories that Xena had without retaining some kind of need for it, or so Gabrielle imagined, anyway - and was busily making a mental note to anticipate that in the future when Xena asked, “Why?” 

“Because, you know,” Gabrielle began searchingly, panicking when she didn’t find anything.

“Yes?” Xena led, a little impatience starting to creep into her tone. “Spit it out, Gabrielle, whatever it is.”

“... you can’t read?” 

Gabrielle’s voice was extremely small by the time she did spit it out, and in the ensuing silence Xena was so still Gabrielle briefly wondered if the gods had descended to stop time.

“Well,” Xena said, and Gabrielle held her breath. “I guess I’m lucky to have a friend like you to help me.”

Gabrielle sighed in relief. It would be okay; she and Xena would be closer for this; she’d see that she could trust Gabrielle. “Yeah, well, I’m just trying.”

“I know.” Something about her voice made Gabrielle look sharply over at her. Xena’s expression was smooth and untelling, and her eyes - was that a gleam? Gabrielle chalked it up to the lateness of the hour and the shadows in the room, especially when Xena continued. 

“Just keep this to yourself, alright? I don’t want word to get out that I can’t read. You understand.”

“Of course, Xena,” Gabrielle said earnestly, willing her to believe it. “I’d never betray your trust.”

“Oh, I know,” Xena said. Another small flicker of unease - just a small one - dissipated in the wake of Xena’s smile. 

It was fine. It was better than fine. It was good. Gabrielle returned the smile, and laid down on the bed. They’d both see.   
  


* * *

  
  


Not a lot changed at first, which in their nascent friendship was as much a relief as a disappointment. It wasn’t too terribly often that they did run into situations where one or the other of them had to read or write in the pursuit of doing good, but the first few times they did, Xena quietly handed over the responsibility to Gabrielle, who could really think of worse things to be than the scribe of the reformed warrior princess in the aforementioned Pursuit of Good. 

Which was why it was surprising when that steadily began to change - so steadily in fact that Gabrielle didn’t realize it until she was exhausted and reading historical records by candlelight while Xena dried her hair by the fireplace, looking every bit the kind of cozy and clean that Gabrielle wanted to be right then. 

“Xena,” she began as the thought occurred to her. “Does it seem to you like we’re running into a lot of situations lately that are… I don’t know, more academic in nature?” 

Xena’s face was the picture of innocence. “No, not really. Why?” 

Gabrielle didn’t really know a way to say ‘_ Well, usually you’re happy to go in sword first given a good enough reason’ _to someone who was trying to reform herself, and that this might actually be further evidence of that reforming in action. 

Sighing, she decided to drop it. “Never mind.”

“I’ve called up for another bath to be brought for you - don’t let it go cold,” Xena advised. 

“I won’t,” Gabrielle said absently, already focused again on the blurring words in front of her. 

Inevitably, the bath went cold. Xena was already asleep by the time Gabrielle crawled into bed on the other side, shivering but clean. Daylight came again in the blink of an eye, and Gabrielle proceeded through the next day cranky at Xena’s side. 

It was a crankiness that spiked when more useless records were brought to them. Wordless with a despairing kind of frustration, Gabrielle turned to Xena as the palace librarians left.

“Huh, tough luck,” Xena said, snapping her fingers in regret which Gabrielle was slowly starting to suspect was exaggerated. “If only I could read.”

Gabrielle’s eyes narrowed. Xena waited patiently, and this time Gabrielle was certain that it was indeed a smirk just waiting to emerge on the edges of her lips. 

“Yeah. If only,” Gabrielle replied; and Xena grinned in what Gabrielle was now sure was triumph. 

  
  
  


* * *

Gabrielle left her suspicions that she was being thoroughly pranked alone for the next few days, if only because Xena - who had perhaps sensed that she’d pushed Gabrielle too far, and who was perhaps also antsy for a good fight or three - took them away from anything that would have required Gabrielle’s skills. 

This was a mistake, as she’d gotten herself talked into a situation where she would be participating in pre-Olympics games, the goal of which was to knock some corrupt mafioso out of the running and then throw the game. 

Naturally, it was being advertised around town. Gabrielle didn’t have any doubt that Xena could win the whole thing if she really wanted to - it was _ Xena _ \- and so when some of the town tourism guild approached her because _ ‘you look like that girl who was following around Xena last night’ _and maybe she already had some promotional material for Xena under her belt? Oh did Gabrielle ever, and she was more than happy to oblige. 

She left a few copies of the posters she’d created quite deliberately on top of Xena’s things where she’d be sure to see them, and waited.

She wasn’t waiting long.

“_ Gabrielle?” _came Xena’s voice five minutes later. The woman herself wasn’t far behind, the papyrus gripped in her fist. “What is this?”

“Oh, that!” Gabrielle said casually. “Well, they want to drum up support for you, and as your best friend, and someone who can write, they naturally enlisted me to create the posters. Not bad, if I do say so myself. What do you think?” 

The posters all featured a minimalist caricature of Xena in her armor in the midst of the events featured at the games, with taglines below them. 

The first read ‘_ Warrior Princess or Warrior Wannabe? _’ 

The second read ‘_ Throwing disci like a girl since 349 BC _’. (Gabrielle had fudged the date since she didn’t know it.) 

And the third: ‘_ Running - back to the kitchen! _’

Gabrielle smiled, using the lighting against her cloud of long golden hair and the cherubic innocence of her face to her advantage. 

“Any feedback?” she asked. 

Xena glowered, and Gabrielle tilted her head, waiting. 

“These are going to go up around town?” 

“Oh, and maybe a little outside of it, too!” Gabrielle said enthusiastically. “The tourism guild was excited about the opportunity of using your name as a draw. In fact, they’re so confident in it that they told me to go ahead and just put them up when I’m finished with them.”

Silence reigned, and Xena’s unnerving blue stare didn’t waver from Gabrielle. Neither did Gabrielle’s sweet smile waver on her face. 

“Looks fine to me,” Xena eventually said, and left the room. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Gabrielle didn’t put them up. She had several copies of real posters she’d kept out of Xena’s sight that actually extolled her many athletic skills, and Xena didn’t say another word about it, not even when they passed one of the posters on the way out of town several days later. She still had her self-appointed responsibility as the holder of Xena’s new reputation in the forms of stories et cetera, after all; and as it was a duty she took very seriously, she refused to compromise it and undo her own work even to get Xena to stop doing whatever this was for whatever reason she was doing it.

In fact, just enough time passed that Gabrielle started to suspect they were going to let it go without talking about it. One evening, she strolled back to camp after washing up in the local stream to discover that Xena had not only cleaned, gutted, and started the fish she’d caught earlier cooking over the open fire, but that she was also lounging under a tree while she waited for Gabrielle to return. It was a very idyllic picture, and one that made Gabrielle consider again the turn her life had taken. No walls, no roof over her head most of the time, but walking into this clearing and discovering dinner cooking and somebody expecting her set a warm glow burning deep in her chest, unexpectedly enough that it stopped her exactly where she was. 

But even as her gaze alighted on Xena again and rested there, she squinted. Was Xena - was that a _ quill - ? _

The glow was pushed aside as Gabrielle strode without further thought into the campsite, which was Xena’s cue to crumple whatever she’d been writing and toss it behind her as if Gabrielle couldn’t see. 

“Xena,” Gabrielle demanded, all five and some feet of her, with wet hair dripping down her back. “What is that?”

Xena stood up - all six feet of her - and casually looked behind her. “What?” 

“You were writing!” 

“What? No, I wasn’t.”

“You _ were, _” Gabrielle accused, and advanced on her. “Give it to me.”

Xena, of course, was like a wall. Or perhaps a very imposing, very nice to look at, very immovable statue. She held Gabrielle off with relatively little effort, and she made a face even as Gabrielle tried to dive under her arm. “No.”

“This is a lot of effort for someone who’s not trying to hide anything!” Gabrielle pointed out, panting with relatively a lot of effort. 

“Who says I’m trying to hide anything? Maybe it’s just the principle of the thing, and you’re a snoop,” Xena said reasonably. 

Gabrielle scoffed. Xena was fuller of secrets than the Aegean was of fish, which was fine - Gabrielle didn’t need to know everything - but this one thing that wasn’t even a secret anymore she did need to know. 

She got lucky with an unexpected, well-timed, and completely accidental brush of her fingers near Xena’s collarbone that made Xena jump. Gabrielle filed away _ that _ piece of information for later and managed to grab the piece of papyrus with a triumphant _ “Ha ha!” _

Xena didn’t appear too put out, honestly, only crossing her arms and looking at her expectantly as Gabrielle uncrumpled it. 

“Well, Xena, let’s just see - “

But Gabrielle’s words were cut off when she caught sight of what the papyrus actually contained. 

“This is _ jibberish _!” she exclaimed, outraged, and looked to Xena for an explanation. 

“Now, Gabrielle,” she said. “Why would you expect anything else from someone who can’t write? It’s not really fair of you to rub it in, you know.”

Gabrielle was becoming more and more apoplectic with rage. “You - you set this up!” 

“Set up what?” Xena’s voice was exasperated, as if it were Gabrielle who was doing this to her and not the other way around; and if somebody else had been in the middle of it Gabrielle honestly would have believed Xena without question based on that alone. “I was scribbling, you can’t get mad at me for that. I can at least hold a quill, you know.”

_ “Ugh,” _Gabrielle said with feeling, and stalked away before she could see the grin inevitably break out on Xena’s face.

  
  
  


* * *

If asked, Gabrielle could say she’d done her best. She’d tried to let it go. It was Xena’s fault if she didn’t want to, and Gabrielle was just playing her game when she tried to trip her up. 

“Hey, Xena, what’s that say?” she casually asked about two weeks later of a sign in the distance announcing they had arrived at the village Epanomi. Xena only raised a _ come on, you can do better than that _ eyebrow, and Gabrielle smiled sweetly in response. 

A few days later: “How many dinars is it?” she asked distractedly while digging around in their money purse, and this time caught Xena turning to look at the sign that said _ 3 dinars - 2 for the price of one! _before she caught herself, and equally casually replied, “I think that sign over there might tell you.”

A week or so after that, she got craftier. In a village where they’d put a stop to the regular raids they’d been experiencing for the better part of a year - and coincidentally where Xena had managed to unwittingly garner the adoration of a significant chunk of the children - Gabrielle suggested to one of the little girls that Xena would probably love to give her an autograph if she asked. 

The little girl approached, sweet and adorable in a way Gabrielle was coming to understand that even Xena had a weakness for; and just loudly enough that Gabrielle could hear her, asked, _ “Xena, can you sign this?” _

Gabrielle held her breath as Xena took the proffered quill - but at the last minute, as if sensing Gabrielle’s eyes on her, looked up and around. Gabrielle ducked down behind a cart, probably not quickly enough, and waited. 

A minute later, the girl ran past with a huge grin on her face, and Gabrielle could just make out that on the papyrus in her hand was a large stylized ‘X’. 

Gabrielle scowled, and then jumped as something knocked the wagon. She looked up to see Xena peering expectantly down at her. 

“Coming?” she asked. 

Gabrielle rose and dusted herself off. “Yeah,” she said, sighing. “Those kids are cute.”

“Kids are like that,” Xena agreed. “Hard to say no to, sometimes.”

It wasn’t quite chastisement, and Gabrielle chanced a quick peek at her to find that she was smiling, maybe a bit wistfully. That was enough to make several burgeoning questions start to take shape in Gabrielle’s mind, but for now, she let it go. 

  
  


* * *

Gabrielle awoke abruptly to darkness and a raging headache. 

“Ow,” she groaned; and when she tried to move, discovered that she couldn’t: there was something binding her hands and her ankles together. 

“Hush up back there,” came a gruff voice.

Sluggishly, panic started to course through her veins. It felt like there were boards underneath her, and the jostling of her body was unmistakably in time to wheels on the road. She was being transported somewhere, and she couldn’t move her arms or legs. 

The reality of the situation set in just in time for her alarm to fully bloom into consciousness. She couldn’t remember anything past going to sleep the previous night as usual, Xena on the other side of the fire working an oiled rag over her leathers while Gabrielle watched blearily, contentedly, as she drifted off. 

Did Xena know she was gone? How long had it been? It was still dark - had they impossibly managed to take out Xena, too? 

_ Stay calm, _ Xena’s voice emerged from the back of her mind. _ Get them talking if you can, any information is better than no information. But also remember that being conscious is better than being unconscious, and being alive is better than being dead - so don’t be stupid. _

Okay. Okay. Gabrielle could do this. 

“Where are you taking me?” Gabrielle called out, and discovered that her voice was scratchy. From disuse? From screaming?

“I told you to hush up!” the same man’s voice said. 

“It’s just that I find it hard to believe that one man took out the Warrior Princess, let alone that anybody would want to go through her to get to little old me,” Gabrielle said, and hoped for confirmation of any of the above. 

“We can give you another blow to the head to keep you quiet if that’ll be easier for you,” another man’s voice said in the darkness. 

_ Don’t be stupid. _

And so Gabrielle was quiet. 

Around dawn, they unloaded her at another campsite - certainly no army camp, no more than ten men total. Bandits? Highway robbers? None of it made sense for why they would have gone to the trouble to capture her - or more frightening to consider, how they had managed to do it. 

Gabrielle pushed aside her fear - Xena was a big girl and could take care of herself - and spoke up again just to get some water and at least her ankles untied. (“What do you think I can really do? I mean, look at these muscles, or should I say, lack thereof. And this long skirt. I mean, I’d trip and fall before I got anywhere.”) They capitulated by holding water to her mouth and tying her hands securely to a post in the middle of the camp, where there were at least three sets of eyes on her at all times. 

And there they left her. Much as Gabrielle was pleased not to have been killed or tortured or raped, there wasn’t much more information or leverage she could get out of these guys when they wouldn’t come near her. Not that Gabrielle didn’t try (“Hey - _ hey! - _Yes, you, I’m talking to you! What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this, huh?”), but she got a gag tied around her mouth for her trouble. 

At midday, Gabrielle became aware of the camp becoming stiller and quieter, and she tensed in anticipation of whatever was coming. 

She didn’t need to have worried: Xena’s war cry let loose from the edge of the treeline, shriller and somehow more terrifying than Gabrielle had ever heard it. Gabrielle closed her eyes and slumped in relief even as the men streamed out - only five of them - to take on Xena’s rage. 

And it was rage. Gabrielle suspected that Xena had already taken out the first five of them quietly, getting her bearings and a sense of the odds she was up against. Five more sloppy thugs or mercenaries or whatever these guys happened to be were nothing to her on a bad day, and she’d disposed of them in short order before turning her burning gaze to Gabrielle. 

“Gabrielle, Gabrielle,” she said as she approached, and Gabrielle couldn’t tell if her name was more soothing to her or to Xena in that moment. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” she said when the gag was gone and Xena was working on her hands. “They hit my head pretty hard, I think, but other than that, I’m fine. How are _ you _?” 

Xena ignored that question. “You think?” she repeated, hands already running over Gabrielle’s skull searchingly. Gabrielle winced when she hit the spot. “Yep, you’ve got a nice lump here. Look at me?” Gabrielle did, and Xena looked deeply - if clinically - into her eyes. “Concussion,” was her clipped verdict. “Now, tell me what happened.”

Gabrielle related the story as best as she could. “I’m not sure how much time really passed,” she said when she was done. “The last thing I remember is falling asleep at our camp.”

“That was just last night,” Xena assured her. “You’ve only been gone a few hours.”

Again, Gabrielle sighed in relief and rubbed at her sore wrists where the bindings had cut in. “I was so worried they’d gotten to you too. I couldn’t figure out what they wanted from me, or how they’d gotten to me at all.”

“This should answer your first question,” Xena said, and handed over a note. Curiously, Gabrielle took it and read it to discover that it was a ransom note. “They seem to have had an idea that I’ve hoarded away vast stores of money and arms over the years, and they were stupid enough to try their luck to get at some of it.”

Gabrielle didn’t care if Xena had. She didn’t even care that here, finally, was proof incontrovertible that Xena could in fact read. Not when Xena was still smoldering with a rage that even the proof of Gabrielle, alive and well, wasn’t entirely dispelling. Gabrielle wondered if it had more to do with the means by which they’d tried to get the money and arms, or the reminder of her past that was still too close for comfort.

“As for the second,” Xena continued, “they were smart enough to lead me on a wild goose chase. There must have been a second party that came when I was too far away from camp to do anything. I came back to that,” she said, gesturing at the note. “But they already had a significant lead on me, and it’s always harder to track at night.”

“You got here, and you’re okay,” Gabrielle said, touching her arm and smiling tentatively to try to calm her. It looked like it succeeded, if only a little. “That’s all I care about.”

They buried the dead, struck the campsite, and burned the remainders. By dusk, they had traveled far enough away that the only remains of the day were their memories and the cinders in their hair and clothes. The latter were easily dealt with. The former, unfortunately, was not. 

“Gabrielle, I’m sorry,” Xena said quietly when the darkness had again descended, the light of their campfire a shield against the intruding world. 

“For what?” Gabrielle asked, aghast, raising her head from mending her clothes where they’d gotten torn in the ruckus. 

“I’m used to being on my own, taking care of myself. There was a point when I should have gone back to camp, and I didn’t. I thought if I could just catch them - I’m so used to only worrying about the things that are around me, and I put myself in a situation where you weren’t around me.”

This had the opposite effect from what Xena had intended, unless Xena had intended for that warm glow to start again in Gabrielle’s chest. 

“Xena,” she said. “Maybe we’re both still learning how to live together - to take responsibility for each other. We’re going to get it wrong sometimes. And in case you haven’t noticed - you’ve put yourself in a situation where I’m around you again.”

Xena smiled briefly, but genuinely, at the truth in that statement, and it triggered a smile from Gabrielle in turn. 

“So,” Gabrielle said mischievously to lighten the mood, “are we gonna talk about the fact that you can read?” 

Xena snorted. “That’s what you’re gonna take away from today?”

“There are worse things to take away,” Gabrielle pointed out, shrugging. 

“I guess you’re right about that,” Xena admitted. “But are we also going to talk about why you thought I couldn’t? Because I gotta say, I’ve been curious.”

“Not curious enough to just come clean.”

It was Xena’s turn to shrug. “Let’s just say that it’s been a long time since I’ve had fun that harmless. Maybe I enjoyed it more than I should have.”

Gabrielle studied her fondly. “No. No, you didn’t,” she said, but there was no accusation in her voice. “I enjoyed it too. You’re so infuriating, you know that?” 

“Yeah, well, back atcha.” But she was smiling too, even ducking her head like she was embarrassed for Gabrielle to see before looking up through her lashes in a surprisingly feminine gesture. 

The silence between them was warm and full, and they let it stand for a timeless moment. Gabrielle took the time to consider Xena’s question, knowing she could justify her reasoning in a hundred ways, start listing off _ the signs _and watch Xena indignantly refute them, but knew it wasn’t what Xena was asking - and it wasn’t what the moment required. And so Gabrielle finally, quietly, broke the silence.

“Reading and writing has always been so special to me. Especially where I come from, where almost nobody can do it, and nobody wants to, and everybody tries to put a stop to it when anybody else wants to. It took me a while to figure out that they were lying when they said it was useless. They didn’t even believe that one.” Gabrielle went quiet for a moment, remembering how it felt to decipher the code of written language, portals to other people and places outside of Poteidaia opening up before her and beckoning, tangible evidence that the person who had set them down had lived and felt and invited her anonymously into the experience. It had been all she’d wanted as she’d grown up. 

“I guess I wanted to have something - some ability - that you didn’t,” she finally admitted. “You can do anything. It was so empowering when I first thought that here was something I could actually do.” She left out that it had made Xena seem less intimidating, and tipped the power dynamics that she supposed would always just be part and parcel of knowing Xena just a little, tiny bit in her favor. 

Xena considered her words just as quietly, though Gabrielle wouldn’t be surprised if she’d already intuited the part that Gabrielle had kept to herself. 

“What would make you feel more like you’re a part of this?” was all she asked. 

Gabrielle should have expected the question, but it still took her aback. 

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. 

“Think about it, then,” Xena said, and put an end to the conversation by getting out her whetstone. The now-familiar sound of Xena sharpening her sword rang soothingly in Gabrielle’s ears, and she considered the question. It had taken her years to figure out that she’d wanted to leave Poteidaia, and it had only been Xena’s sudden appearance that had crystallized her resolve, even while instilling a whole new set of murky desires to do and to be that she hadn’t made sense of yet. All she knew for now was that she wanted - needed - to be here. The rest might take another set of years and years. 

She looked over at Xena again: quick and patient as water, powerful and fierce as a storm, enduring like time. She smiled. She was starting to get the sense that Xena wouldn’t mind the wait. 

* * *

  
  
  


Years and years later, Gabrielle held a scroll in her hands - not one of her own, but a gift from Xena - and watched the last of the glorious sunset fade slowly over the kaleidoscopic sea from the circle of Xena’s arms. 

Apropos of nothing, Xena chuckled. Gabrielle’s lips quirked at the sound. 

“What?” she asked without turning, half expecting another prank even after everything.

“Remember that time you thought I couldn’t read?” 

Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you’re bringing that up now.”

“Why not? I thought about it now, and you asked.”

“You know, you looked awfully suspicious of the contents of this poem earlier,” Gabrielle said. “Maybe you’ve just been playing a really, _ really _long game.”

“What?” Xena scoffed. “You think I can’t read again?”

“Wanna prove you can?” Gabrielle challenged, and fully turned around. Xena’s stare was deceptively unimpressed, but Gabrielle knew her: there was a keen gleam of interest in deep in her eyes where Gabrielle knew to look, coupled with a suspicion that she already knew where Gabrielle was going with this. 

And, well, she wasn’t _ wrong _. Gabrielle wasn’t exactly trying to be subtle. She smiled winningly, waggling the scroll back and forth in one hand in front of Xena in offering, and wasn’t surprised when Xena, at length, eyes narrowed, snatched it up decisively. 

“Well, these are definitely words,” she observed as she unrolled it, feigning detachment. 

So predictable. Gabrielle was undeterred, and leaned into her body to press a lingering kiss to a particularly sensitive spot near her collarbone that she’d found by accident long ago. Xena’s breath caught, and faintly, Gabrelle could make out her pulse quickening not far from where her lips still pressed. 

“Read to me?” she entreated simply, her breath fanning against Xena’s skin.

Xena’s entire body softened at the request. Gabrielle knew the words of the poem, of course, had already committed them to memory and hidden them away in her heart for safekeeping; but she wanted, just once, to hear them clothed in Xena’s voice. 

And it was enough for Xena to oblige. Gabrielle stayed close, close enough to feel the buzz of her voice against her own chest, lips, cheek, her fingers tracing the skin of Xena’s arms and shoulders and hands to feel the fire racing there even as Xena told her it was there, to sense the minute trembling of the air just above it, to hear the almost girlish breathiness of her voice as she spoke, actually in earnest, of dying of love. 

But the scroll had been long abandoned to the side, Xena’s hands having found better places to be with Gabrielle in her lap. 

“You weren’t reading,” Gabrielle accused against her lips. Xena gave into the temptation she offered and kissed her long and slow and thorough, leaving Gabrielle overwhelmed and breathless by the time Xena pulled away. 

“Didn’t need to,” Xena admitted, her blue eyes close and bright, bright. Gabrielle shivered at the sight, and the words, and their implications - not that she’d ever believed that Xena herself hadn’t already committed those words to heart. Gabrielle pictured her staring at the words, reading them until they’d seamlessly imprinted on the essential truth of her: just one expression of just one facet of all that unfathomable force of her being. 

Gabrielle could see it in her now. Xena had always struggled with the twinned urges to contain it and to set it free, and the effort to do both simultaneously made her burn and vibrate like she would come apart at the seams. So much power she carried around minute by minute; and how much more potent it was in moments like this, when Gabrielle was the thing around which it was ordered and focused as well as the only one who could safely set it free.

It was a power that had stopped scaring her a long time ago, and she had Xena gasping and demanding and nearly desperate before she abruptly brought a halt to what Gabrielle was doing.

“Hold on,” she protested when Gabrielle, concerned, immediately complied. “This is your birthday.” 

Was that all? Gabrielle only laughed and let one finger trace the skin between her eyes until her palm fully cupped her cheek. Instinctively, Xena turned her head just enough to kiss her palm, one hand rising to grasp Gabrielle’s wrist while the other remained where it grasped loosely, comfortingly, at the damp, naked skin of her back.

Somewhere to their left lay the scroll; and Gabrielle already knew that she’d carry it with her for the rest of her life. When they left this place, she’d carefully pick it up and tuck it into the saddlebag that she kept closest, the one that housed the few other objects that were precious to her; and whenever times were rough in the future - and after almost a decade of sharing a life with Xena, she didn’t kid herself that they wouldn’t come - she knew she would pull it out, more to touch than to read, taking solace in this tangible, personal reminder that she loved and was loved. 

But for now - for now, Xena’s skin vibrated under her touch with want and something far deeper, so transparent to Gabrielle that no words could touch the glorious immediacy of her. 

“Lucky for me,” Gabrielle told her, “that all I want is you.”


End file.
